


Torture

by anxiousgeek



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, F/M, Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-09
Updated: 2009-12-09
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:30:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,410
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anxiousgeek/pseuds/anxiousgeek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helen is having terrible dreams. Incest warning</p>
            </blockquote>





	Torture

The first time she'd had the dream, she could almost deny it had even happened. That first morning she managed to push it down far enough to ignore it as she immersed herself in her work. Mornings like these meant she was fortunate to be so busy.

Not that fortunate.

The next night, she had the dream again, and it was harder to dismiss a second time. Even more so the fourth and fifth time.

It always started at the same point.

Ashley was kissing her.

Her daughter's hands were holding hers, and they felt like they always did, a little rough and a little cold. Her lips were the completely opposite, warm, soft, and it was information that Helen had never expected to discover about Ashley, and information she didn't want to know. In her dreams however she kissed back, pulling her hands free of Ashley's only to thread them into her blonde hair, soft like she knew, to pull her closer.

There were so many reasons why it was such a bad dream. Her active participation was just one of them.

Ashley was the aggressor though, she was in all her personal interactions, and in the dream she pushed Helen back towards their bed, Helen's own bed, her hands free to unbutton her blouse.

They were silent, the only sounds were mummers of encouragement from them both, as Helen lay down and Ashley spread herself over her, fitting their bodies together. She was warm, on top of her, Helen had been this close to her daughter before, she'd hugged her tightly in moments of distress and moments of pure love, but this was neither, this was base, and Helen didn't do base, not even in her sexual encounters. There was always more. In the dreams though, there were no other feelings beyond desire.

Desire Helen felt for her daughter, which made her feel all the worse in her waking hours.

They continued to kiss on the bed, Ashley's cold hands slowly warming up on Helen's heated body as she smoothed her palms over the exposed skin, her blouse now open and breasts bared. Helen's own hands pulled up Ashley's top, finger tips pressing into her skin, making her moan.

The moan often woke her up.

It was a sound she'd never heard come from Ashley's lips, and it sounded so read that it jolted Helen awake every time, still feeling her daughter's body pressed against hers in the morning light.

Another morning, another shudder of revulsion, and while Helen ad never been one to sleep in, or even struggle to get up and out of bed, the dreams gave her incentive to jump straight from slumber and into her work.

zzzzz

 

"I think Ashley is trying to tell me something."

Will looked up from his book, to look at her, and she stood uncomfortable in his gaze for a moment. The dreams were beastly, monstrous, but there had to be a reason for them, her grief not with-standing.

"Ashely is de-" He paused. "From beyond the grave?" Will asked.

"You don't believe in an afterlife?" she said, holding onto her stomach as wave of nausea hit her. She always felt sick when she woke now.

"I'm not sure, I believe in all sorts of things I didn't before. I just didn't think you would."

"I'm not sure what I believe, but there has to be a reason."

"A reason for what?" he asked.

She hesitated, Will was a good man, and she trusted him to keep her secrets and not judge her, but this was beyond anything she wanted either of them to have to deal with.

"Magnus?"

"The dreams. I'm having some terrible nightmares."

"About Ashley?"

She nodded, not quite trusting her voice for the moment.

"Well, dreams can be interpreted in different ways," he said. "Why don't you tell me about them. If they are messages we can figure out what they mean and if they're not messages, maybe you can clear your mind of them."

"A problem shared?"

"Exactly."

He said it with his ever hopeful grin, like it was so easy and for a moment she was convinced of it too, taking a step closer to him as she sat back on the sofa. He looked so at home at the Sanctuary now, while Helen had never felt so out of place.

The dreams had her feeling out of place in her own mind though.

"Maybe another time."

"Okay," he said, with another smile. "I'm always here."

Yes you are, she thought gladly.

"Thank you Will," she said instead.

"No problem." He gave a little wave when she quickly turn to leave the living room, the confusion clear on his face.

zzzzz

 

The dreams were persistent, and therefore unavoidable. While Helen didn't sleep an awful lot, she did sleep. She had to sleep like everyone else. At some point in her busy days she had to fit in three or four hours sleep to keep going.

With the dreams though, it didn't feel like she was really getting any rest.

She didn't always wake with Ashley's moan.

Sometimes the dreams continued beyond that point.

Ashley was persistent, and Helen was lost in desire, her daughter stripping the rest of her clothes from her body and touching her in places that had been forgotten by her own hands long ago. Pathetic but true, and it seemed her daughter had been busy learning things that Helen had no idea she knew about. She wasn't naive about her daughter, not by a long shot, she just hadn't given it this much though. Hadn't given any thought to the fact that Ashley might have this particular skill set. In her dreams she was in heaven when Ashley kissed her way down her body. Awake it was hell, she couldn't forget about it, trying to forget only made her remember more details. Like Ashley's blonde hair tickling her abdomen when she went down on her, the way her daughters nails scratched her a little as she pushed her fingers into her body.

She moaned, couldn't help it, couldn't help the way her hips were moving towards Ashley hands, forming a rhythm that had her panting, had Ashley grinning and she knew that grin well.

Victory.

zzzzz

 

"Magnus, Magnus wake up."

Will was shaking her hard, and when she opened her eyes she saw he was standing over her, blushing bright red. She frowned, and sat up as he moved away from her.

"Will, what's wrong?"

"You were, ah, you were dreaming," he said.

She looked around her, she was in the living room, a blanket covering her legs, the fire burning, but she couldn't remember falling asleep there. All she could remember was her dream.

"I-"

"Looked like a pretty good dream, but, I um-" He stuttered and paused. "Figured you'd prefer to be in bed."

"It was not a good dream," she stated, closing her eyes, seeing only Ashley. "Bloody hell."

"Magnus?"

She couldn't imagine what Will had seen, didn't want to know what she had been doing in her sleep. If she was talking, moaning, moving. She shuddered.

"Thank you Will," she said, standing up, the blanket falling to the floor.

"Helen," he said, "what's going on?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you've been distant for weeks, you come to me saying Ashley is trying to tell you something, you're barely sleeping again, less than an hour a day," he said. "Tell me what's wrong, please?"

"I can't."

"Why not? You can trust me."

"I know," she said, sitting down again. He sat opposite her.

"Try me."

She laughed.

"I hope it is Ashley, but at the same time, she wouldn't taunt me like this."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"The dreams, Will, the damn dreams."

"The dreams about Ashley?"

She nodded and he moved to sit next to her, putting an arm around her. She hadn't noticed the tears that had started to fall.

"They're horrible Will, I can't take much more of them, but they're there, every night," she said, "every time I close my eyes."

"What happens in them?"

She looked at him, pulling out of her his hold, and finding a handkerchief in her pocket to dab her eyes with. she didn't even know how to say it, how to describe them. She had the words, but not the courage, which was rare for her, but anything to do with Ashley had her courage failing her right now.

"Okay, let me take an education guess," he said, "from what I just saw while you were asleep."

He was blushing a little again, and she couldn't look him in the eye.

"You're having dreams of a sexual nature," he continued, "about Ashley. About you and Ashley."

She nodded.

"It's not uncommon," he said, "to dream about someone you've just lost, the intensity of the dreams could just reflect the intensity of your feelings of grief."

She nodded again.

"I wish it were that simple."

"Well, it may be, or it may be something else."

"I just want it to stop."

"How about a scan?" he said, "Or we do some research into this? Get the team on it?"

Her hand snapped out to grab his arm, and she looked at him finally.

"No, I don't want anyone to know."

"It's nothing to be ashamed of Magnus."

"I'm dreaming about having sex with my daughter Will, I'm dreaming about enjoying sex with my daughter. No one must know."

He didn't need to know that, that in the dreams she enjoyed it, it had just come out, feeling like a desperate confession. He didn't say anything, she could count on him for that. For his discretion.

zzzzz

 

They found nothing.

She and Will spent two weeks scanning her brain, her body, the building and surrounding area. They did research into pretty much anything that had a tenuous connection with the mother-daughter relationship, or dreams, and a few things that didn't.

The dreams continued.

She had an orgasm.

A real one, in the waking world, caused by a dream about her daughter, her fingers and lips pushing her into pleasure. She woke shaking, sweating, breathing harsh and loud in her bedroom. She hadn't let herself fall to sleep anywhere else in the Sanctuary, Will had helped with that, and the morning she woke, with a light buzzing between her legs and in her head, she was so glad of that.

She scrubbed herself raw in the shower, forced her fingers down her throat over the toilet basin in a bid to get rid of the nausea in her stomach. Kissed Will to try and forget about kissing her daughter.

None of it worked.

All she managed to do was make her skin sensitive, her throat sore and her relationship with Will tense.

She didn't know if finding nothing was good or bad. Brilliant or terrible. She didn't like the idea that Ashley would communicate with her in this manner, but didn't like the idea that these dreams were a result of her grief either.

"Magnus?"

She looked up to see Will standing inside her office. She forced a smile out.

"Were you dozing?" he asked.

"Not quite."

"You can't avoid it forever."

"I don't want to avoid it, I want to find an answer."

"The answer is simple."

"No, I will not accept that," she snapped.

He smiled, and closed the office door.

"Dream theory is pretty much, well, theory, but the ideas are sound, and the psychiatry of it isn't far off," he sat down opposite her and she watched him as he continued to talk. He seemed to be less tense than before, as if the kiss hadn't happened, and that annoyed her a little for reasons she didn't need to be looking into right now.

"Dreaming of a daughter in any sense, usually means some sort of rift in the relationship, or the idea that something is going unsaid or undone."

"That much is obvious."

"Maybe not," he said with a smile. "It's a rift because she is de-gone, not because of some argument, not because of something either of you have done. Deep down you have accepted that's it's not your fault. That's why you're having these dreams."

"The dreams are horrible Will, incestuous."

"You're torturing yourself," he said, still smiling, and she wanted to remove the smile from his face, the anger and revulsion bubbling barely below the surface. She had told him so he could help her rid herself of these dreams, not to enjoy her predicament.

He sensed her anger, and schooled his face into a more neutral expression.

"Ashley knew you loved her at all times, I've seen you tell her most days that I've been here, often more than once," he said. "You did everything you could to find her, save her, you spent most of her adult like patching her up in one way or another. You spent weeks after she died trying to find her."

She stuttered over some words, feeling tears again. She managed to hold them back as she continued.

"Deep down you don't believe that you're not to blame for this, and your subconscious is making you suffer for it."

He was right, she loved and hated that he was right, she could feel something shift within her, something inside confirming it. She still kept the tears at bay, but barely.

"There's no easy fix, but you know that, knew that all along."

He stood up again, gave her one last sad smile and left her office.

She still didn't cry.

Later she found him lying on the sofa in the living room, kicking off his shoes quickly when he saw her walk in, and she smiled. She wasn't here to berate him for having shoes on the furniture. He smiled back her, and she opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out at first.

He opened her arms to her.

"Thank you," she whispered.

She climbed onto the sofa with him, lying half on top of him, and he pulled the blanket from the back of the sofa to cover them both. She fell to sleep quickly in his arms, and still dreamt about Ashley, her daughter pushing and pulling at her in the bedroom, but when she woke, Will was still asleep beneath her and she found it was a lot easier to forget the dreams.


End file.
